About TNW

TNW Sites

DishOnIt highlights what food you ate, not where you ate it

The restaurant where you eat is definitely a big part of the dining experience, but the actual food that you eat is more important.

Apps like foursquare let you check-in at restaurants, and leave tips about things you think other people should try there. The app DishOnIt uses foursquare’s API for the location stuff, and lets you focus on how good the food is. Or not.

The DishOnIt site is beautiful and simple, and the company has a mobile app for the iOS, Android, and Windows Phone platforms.

The idea is simple, if you’re at a restaurant, you can rate the food you ate on the spot. That rating will be attached to the location that DishOnIt found in the foursquare API.

Finding something good to eat

Most of the time, when you’re looking for a place to eat it’s because you’re in the mood for something specific. Usually conversations at my house start with “I really want a burger right now”. DishOnIt will help you find the best burger that’s closest to you.

The site is absolutely gorgeous, and doesn’t have too much going on to distract you from finding the food that you want in the area that you are in. The site has just added a new feature that tracks food trucks, which is being beta tested in Seattle.

By putting in your location and the type of food you’re in the mood for, you’ll be shown results that others have submitted. If someone likes the food, it gets a stamp of “Yum”. You can click on the item, and the information about the restaurant from foursquare’s databases are shown.

Reviewing food

This is when the DishOnIt app comes into play. The iOS version is stunning, and streams all of the data from the website beautifully. Companies that focus on both the web and mobile experiences of a product will have longevity and more opportunities to grow its user base.

When you’re at a restaurant and are ready to rate what you’ve eaten, the app pics up your location and uses foursquare’s API to locate the restaurant you’re in.

You’ll say what you ate, and then give it a stamp denoting how the food was. The stamps are pretty funny and are labeled “Yum Yum”, “Yum”, “Yawn”, and “Yuck”. It’s a pretty unique spin on an otherwise boring star-based rating system.

You can take a picture of your food and push your review and restaurant check-in to Twitter, foursquare, and Facebook all at once if you like.

Focusing on the “what”, rather than the “where” is a smart move. Even though services like Foodspotting, Foodster, and Yelp have review systems to help you find food wherever you are, the focus on the actual food and the unique and fun rating system will keep you coming back to DishOnIt. The only part I can complain about is that the food truck feature isn’t integrated into the app, and is only servicing Seattle. With other major cities like NYC, Los Angeles, and San Francisco leading the food truck revolution, it’s a missing piece right now.

Drew Olanoff was The Next Web's West Coast Editor. He coined the phrase "Social Good" and invented the "donation by action" model for online charitable movements. He founded #BlameDrewsCancer. You can follow him on Twitter, Google+, Facebook, or email drew@thenextweb.com